Through the Looking Glass – Developing a strategy that listens to the voices of young women
“Cheshire Puss, would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
said Alice. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,”
said the Cat.
Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865)
What does a young women’s leadership strategy for the Pacific have to do with Alice in Wonderland, some may ask? For Georgina Ariki, President of the YWCA of the Solomon Islands, however, the link is clear. At the closing dinner of the Pacific Young Women’s Leadership Strategy Reference Group meeting in Honiara, Georgina reminded the group of the courage it takes to know which path to choose and reminded them that having the vision to know where you want to go is half the battle.
Juli Dugdale, World YWCA Global Programme manager Women’s Leadership and Focal point Asia/Pacific, recently returned from a visit to Pacific YWCAs, including the YWCA of Samoa, Solomon Islands, Fiji and American Samoa. The issues relating to women, young women and girls in the region are extensive and the YWCAs work towards bringing them hope, inspiration and a voice. The YWCA has a legacy of supporting young women’s leadership and most women leaders in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Australia, America Samoa and New Zealand/Aotearoa (ANZ) have been associated with leadership opportunities both in the region and internationally.
The YWCA movement has been active in the Pacific region for over 30 years, and the commitment to develop a regional strategy to build young women’s leadership is a milestone. For the President of the YWCA of Fiji, Leba Mataitini, it was a “breakthrough,” and an occasion to celebrate a landmark effort by YWCAs in the Pacific to take the lead on ensuring that young women are not only considered as part of other regional initiatives, but that encouraging their leadership is prioritised and approached strategically.
After consultations with young women in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Australia, Solomon Islands and ANZ, with remote input from Tonga and Bougainville, an expert reference group of representatives from regional organisations, including the Commonwealth Youth Programme, Pacific Youth Council, Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, New Zealand Family Planning, Leadership Solomon Islands and Fem’LINKPACIFIC, as well as key UN Agencies, amongst which UN Women, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNFPA, and UNESCO, were invited to further develop the strategy. The two-day meeting, which included both young women aged 30 and under and older women, was chaired by Juli Dugdale and facilitated by a young woman, Kiri Dicker.
Storytelling - a traditional way of sharing information in many Pacific cultures – was central to the strategic development process. The group was encouraged to reflect on personal and professional experiences and to develop priority areas for moving young women’s leadership forward. The result is a strategy which genuinely emerged from the work, knowledge and insight of the young women themselves, as well as regional champions of young women’s leadership. As this was the very first meeting on young women’s issues in the Pacific and calling on women to become champions of young women, this was indeed an occasion to celebrate. “This truly is a turning point for young women’s leadership in the Pacific and the beginning of a new era of working in partnership and collaboration,” said Dugdale.
.The Pacific Young Women’s Leadership Strategy, led by the YWCA, is a testament to the continued commitment of the organisation to improving the lives of young women in the region, and it will be launched at World Council 2011 in Zurich, Switzerland. The development of the strategy was made possible by a grant from the AusAID Pacific Leadership Programme and the World YWCA.
